{"id":109706,"date":"2025-08-25T20:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/109706\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T20:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:51:13","slug":"trump-hegseth-float-renaming-defense-department-to-department-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/109706\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump, Hegseth float renaming Defense Department to Department of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> said plans to rename his agency as the Department of War are \u201ccoming soon,\u201d but it remains unclear whether the executive branch can make such a move without congressional permission. <\/p>\n

During a White House press event on Monday, Hegseth spoke about the deployment of National Guard troops throughout Washington, D.C., <\/a>and along the southern U.S. border. President Donald Trump responded to the remarks by complimenting the service members but complaining that the Department of Defense name<\/a> \u201cdidn\u2019t sound good\u201d to him. <\/p>\n

\u201cDepartment of Defense, I don\u2019t want to be defense only,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe want defense, but we want offense, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED\"\"<\/p>\n

The United States used the Department of War moniker for its military bureaucracy from 1789 to 1947. In 1949, it was changed to the current Department of Defense name amid massive restructuring of the military services. <\/p>\n

That change came as a result of the National Security Act of 1947, approved by the House and Senate, which also established the Secretary of Defense post. It\u2019s unclear if changing the name of the military apparatus would lead to objections or litigation from Congress. <\/p>\n

But Trump has frequently mentioned the idea of reverting to the war name in the past, and has referred to Hegseth as \u201cSecretary of War\u201d on several occasions. <\/p>\n

His administration has also been aggressive in other areas of reshaping the federal government, including shuttering a host of agencies and significantly cutting the federal workforce end strength. <\/p>\n

But the White House has proposed increasing the number of active-duty troops in the military amid the other cuts, arguing that they are needed for ensuring national security into the future. <\/p>\n

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said plans to rename his agency as the Department of War are \u201ccoming soon,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,4426,26711,29908,4427,29909,10830,72005,29910,45744,3,1572,72006,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-109706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-circulated-air-force-times","tag-circulated-army-times","tag-circulated-marine-corps-times","tag-circulated-military-times","tag-circulated-navy-times","tag-department-of-defense","tag-department-of-war","tag-military-times","tag-national-guard","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-trump-military","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}